Okay, we’ve all heard of Solyndra and how that turned out, but how have the Obama Administration’s other investments in green technology and jobs fared? A quick rundown.

Solar Trust of America. An Oakland-based integrated solar industrial products company. It abandoned a $2.1 billion federal loan guarantee for its 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project, slated to be the world’s largest solar power plant and intended to create hundreds of temporary construction jobs.

The company planned to use solar thermal panels, but falling photovoltaic panel cost caused company to stick with PV panels, which would have violated the terms of the federal loan, since the government required use of the more expensive and less efficient thermal technology. In August the VP of external affairs at Solar Trust, Edward Sullivan, said company officials will look for private cash and loans for the project.

As of late October Solar Millennium, the German parent company of Solar Trust of America, had a preliminary agreement to sell all of its American solar projects, including what Gannett reported as “a stalled Blythe project,” to solarhybrid, another German solar developer.

Beacon Power. A Tyngsboro, Massachusetts-based energy storage company. Beacon filed for bankruptcy in late October, a year after spending $39 million of a $43 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration to fund part of an energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.

Beacon officials say the company is currently operating at a loss and revenues are not enough to support its operations, despite a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling in October requiring power markets to pay more for the company’s frequency regulation services. The company CEO and other officials are minor Obama and Massachusetts Democrat donors.

“The company was by far the market leader in the flywheel electricity storage sector,” wrote industry observer Raphael Bouskila. “This leads to questions about the viability of flywheel storage in particular and grid-scale energy storage in general.”

SpectraWatt. A producer of crystalline-silicon PV cell products, trying to develop ways to improve solar cells without changing the current manufacturing processes. Backed by Intel and Goldman Sachs, the company’s factory is located in IBM’s Hudson Research Park in Hopewell Junction, New York.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August after receiving $150,000 from the National Science Foundation in June 2010 and $500,000 grant from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as part of the Obama Administration’s stimulus package. It received more than $91 million in private investment from Intel Capital and other firms, and currently owes creditors $38.7 million and is planning to auction virtually all assets. Company officials blame competition from Chinese rivals and deteriorating prices in the solar industry as well as “a harsher than usual 2010 European winter” for failure.

SunPower. The company received a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama Administration in September to help build the California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County under the rationale that it was “helping create green jobs.” A total of 15 permanent jobs would have been located at the facility after a couple hundred construction jobs were over, with more jobs created at the company’s Mexico plant.

Democrat Rep. George Miller’s son, George Miller IV, is SunPower’s top lobbyist, and he was paid $178,000 to lobby on behalf of the company. The elder Miller is a powerful California Democrat. SunPower PAC filings show that for the 2010 midterm election campaign cycle, it donated $14,650 to Democrats and $1,000 to Republicans.

In April of this year the Energy Department gave SunPower a conditional loan guarantee, hours before the DOE 1705 loan program expired at the end of Fiscal Year 2011 on Sept. 30, “even though the company was receiving financing in the capital markets,” according to Investors.com, which noted that shortly after the conditional guarantee, “French energy giant Total bought a majority ownership in SunPower and extended a $1 billion credit line to the company.”

The company posted $150 million in losses during the first half of 2011. Its debt is nearly 80 percent of its market value and the company is facing class action lawsuits for misstating its earnings. SunPower admitted in its SEC filings that it is very dependent on government, and that a big slug of its revenues depends on a limited number of customers.

Industry observer Neil W. McCabe wrote that SunPower now carries $820 million in debt, “an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization.  If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.”

Mountain Plaza. The owner of the first truckstop electrification terminal at TR Auto Truck Plaza in Dandridge, Tennessee. On May 18, 2010 it received approval of $424,000 federal stimulus fund grant, part of $2 million Tennessee Department of Transportation for truckstop electrification projects along Tennessee interstates.

On May 24, U.S. Bank sued Mountain Plaza for failing to repay a $2 million loan. The company filed for bankruptcy June 3. The Obama administration stimulus to Mountain Plaza was awarded June 15. A subsequent auction to sell company equipment failed to attract a single bid. Current creditors include state and federal governments.

Evergreen Solar. A Marlborough, Massachusetts-based solar manufacturer, Evergreen produces proprietary String Ribbon solar cells for the photovoltaics industry. The firm lost approximately $950 million over past three calendar years. Hard figures are, well, hard to come by, but the company probably received between $1.7 million and $5.3 million of federal funds as part of the Obama Administration $180 million grant to the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and other state entities for weatherization and energy grants, and Evergreen received much larger state-originating funds in obscure, mostly unitemized amounts.

The company shifted production from Massachusetts to China in March, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy August 15, listing $485.6 million in debt. (Kudos to analyst Tom Blumer for his work helping untangle Evergreen’s public money consumption.)

Olsen’s Crop Service, Olsen’s Acquisition Mills. A Berlin, Wisconsin-based buyer of crops grown by state farmers for sale to such users as ethanol plants. In February 2009 the company declared bankruptcy and default on a $58 million loan from BNP Paribas, but under new ownership received a $10 million government stimulus in January 2010 for increased employment, new equipment and debt refinancing, among other needs, including land purchases. Archer Daniels Midland bought the defunct operation’s assets in September.

Solyndra. The California solar panel firm which became the poster child for failed Obama administration green jobs and tech crony capitalist handouts. The company fired 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy in September after securing a $535 million government loan. George Kaiser, Solyndra’s chief financial backer, was a lucrative bundler of campaign donations for presidential candidate Barack Obama, and shortly after President Obama’s inauguration, in March 2009, the company received the Obama Administration’s Energy Department’s first energy loan guarantee, $535 million financing to expand the company’s solar rooftop production.

The loan closed in September 2009. Vice President Joe Biden praised the company’s stability in September of that year as well.

But in March 2010 Pricewaterhouse Coopers raised serious concerns about company viability, warning that it “has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit that, among other factors, raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” In May, President Obama praised the company’s stability.

In June the company canceled a planned IPO. According to industry observer Eric Wesoff, Solyndra also announced raising another $175 million from its existing investors “to fund the company’s existing operations and support its growth plans,” from such VC investors as CMEA, Rockport, Redpoint, Madrone Capital Partners, Argonaut Private Equity, Virgin Green Fund and others — including the American taxpayer, thanks to the Obama administration. Wesoff reported that the $175 million cams “with onerous terms that may include a recapitalization of the firm.”

Layoffs began in November. ABC News reported that the Obama administration announced commitment to support Solyndra in March 2009 before receiving full marketing and legal reviews, a shocking and highly suspicious omission. The company shut its doors and fired 1,100 full and part-time workers as they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 7, 2011.

Recent revelations include e-mails showing “the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million in 2010, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire.”

On September 8, FBI and Energy Department’s inspector general raided Solyndra’s office in a surprise attack, seizing records in a move common to criminal probes. When asked if the company would face criminal prosecution the Obama Administration’s U.S. Attorney Office declines to comment.

Fisker Automotive. The company received a $529 million loan from the Obama administration to produce $97,000 hybrid cars in Finland. The money was given under the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program. The company is backed by top Democrat insider Al Gore, who stands to reap substantial financial benefits from the loan, as well as Gore’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers venture capital firm partner John Doerr, a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and a big Democrat political donor.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

4 Responses to “Government Investments In Green Technology: A Scorecard”